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There Are Other Ways to Call Out Psuedo-Blackness Besides “Hotep”

11-08-2016, 11:22 AM

This is interesting reading family check it out

Y’all DO know that in a certain context, calling someone a “hotep” is a microaggression, right?

First of all, let’s be clear… “Hotep” means “peace” in Kemetic tongue and has come to be a positive and rather popular greeting in the conscious community. Turning that around and using the term “Hotep” as a pejorative amounts to co-opting a Black term and making it something ugly.

Now, let me be specific about my assertion.

There are certainly times when Black folks that are conscious of their Blackness fall short of being progressive, radical or revolutionary in their Black thinking. Those folks often end up thinking and acting in an oppressive and/or euro way because they haven’t done the appropriate study, listening, learning and mental/psychological reflection to absorb what is truly Black (and yes, there is a definition and delineation of what is and ain’t Black). And then our wayward family members try to force that thinking on other Black folks with false Black conscious packaging. So yeah, straight up, that’s a contradiction.

The situations I find JUST AS problematic are when the uninitiated, unstudied, unlearned, and those who are not committed enough to incorporate Blackness into their lives find themselves at odds with those who have done some study and are trying to live a Black/African lifestyle, and take offense at the notion of someone trying to tell them how to be Black.

Yes, there are times when Black progressives, radicals or revolutionaries have called another Black person out on their ignorance. I’ve seen, heard, and read far too many situations where this happens, but then the uncommitted, with hurt feelings, tries to whip that “Hotep” name tag out. That’s BS too.

You don’t call the people who fake-do a thing by the name of that thing. Skaters call people who dress like them, but don’t skate “posers.”

For instance: You have people who belong to Black Greek letter sororities and fraternities who fake the funk. They’ve been caught on video and everything, wearing paraphernalia, throwing up signs, trying to congregate with those who have “been to the hole” and “took wood.” But we don’t call them “Black Greeks,” or “Bruhs,” or “Frats” or “Sorors.” Black folks respect that. And we’re talking about a Black institution with Greeek motifs.

You don’t call someone who lies about earning a GED a “graduate.”

You don’t call a dude that lies to you and tells you he’s not married anymore so he can holler at you a “divorcee.”

I wonder how stalwartly progressive Black folks would defend a term like “intersectionality” if the provocateurs we talk about, or some other fringe group, took hold of it and made it synonymous with “unfocused bullshit.”

But here we have, essentially, conscious people being ok saying “‘dem niggas that be on that Black Power bullshit” because some unconscious folks made that shit popular. Calling someone a “Hotep” is taking a wholly Black expression and co-opting it.

So let’s just gon’ ‘head and add “Hotep” to the pile of microaggressions we avoid in our safe spaces.